8 SUPERMAN: The Heady Knight
by Dan Bivens
Summary: What kind of super help will Batman and Superman need to defeat an enemy from space who seems to be unstoppable? Read after THE TIMELESS KNIGHT under COMICS: LEGION OF SUPER HEROES
1. Chapter 1

**THE HEADY KNIGHT**

Chapter 1

While Superman managed to maintain a precarious peace within the vast expanse of Metropolis, via his ongoing struggle against villainy and violence, much of it micro-managed by the illustrious billionaire Lex Luthor. And while his crimefighting colleague, Batman, also a billionaire, from the structurally despotic Gotham City, did much the same within his urban battlefield…

…one using a laundry list of super-powers, the other a Bat-belt filled with inventive devices conceived by the brilliant brain of the Dark Knight Detective…

A far distant star system's single inhabited homeworld, at least six centuries more advanced in its intrinsic technologies than the planetary home of Humans, was about to undergo a decidedly dangerous, yet extremely necessary, power upheaval. One in which the overly oppressed, by their very own supercomputers controlling all, would follow a single, solitary member of their green-skinned species in a radical attempt to free their race from cybernetic slavery.

"Are you sure this will work?" apprehensively asked one of the brave, bald, green-hued freedom fighters, relying solely upon primitive pre-computer weaponry on the same uncomplicated level of projectile-spewing pistols and rifles currently used so savagely on faraway Earth.

"Yes," promptly replied the green rebel-leader of untold trillions, both on and off their homeworld, with a certainty unseen for centuries. "If we act as a unified force of flesh-and-bone, the Computer Tyrants shall, at long last, fall. Forever freeing our people from artificial rule. First, on Colu, then on our colonized planets. A freedom not known except by our ancient ancestors before our computers took total control over our complex lives. Making them ours to ultimately control! Just as it was before the rise of a Syntho-Mind! If we fail…let it be in a bloody bid for what was over what is."

In an unexpressed surge of duty and determination, fueled by outlawed feelings over the sterility of super-intelligence promoted and permitted by the Computer Tyrants exerting such autocratic command. Not only over the many billions on the planet and, by way of carefully duplicated satellite supercomputers, the trillions more existing on colonized planets situated several light-years away…

"Attack!" loudly yelled this bald, green revolutionary as he led a veritable flood of fellow Coluans against the centrally located seat of cybernetic brains that had held the reins of complete power for far too many cerebrally-enslaved generations.

"Alert! Alert! Alert!" came the automated alarm from within the mechanical heart of the hive-minded supercomputers, even as beings of green flesh and greener blood opened fire with archaic weaponry specifically designed to do what those of energy could not.

Pierce anti-energy force fields and physically destroy the intricate connections meant to maintain faster-than-thought Syntho-Mind contemplation.

In other words, bring centuries-old supercomputers to a sudden, screeching halt.

But not before hundreds of thousands of Coluan rebels fell before computer-controlled cannons unleashing destructive streams of semi-solid plasma into their mutinous midst.

Fortunately for the flesh-and-bone freedom fighters, their singular leader endured…

"I, Vril Drox, declare our interstellar independence!" resolutely shouted the bald, green-skinned anarchistic commander as he spearheaded the final assault upon the actual electronic core of the Computer Tyrants. "Now…and forevermore!"

Unfortunately, just as it seemed cybernetic slavery was about to be obliterated along with the proverbial brains of the Computer Tyrants…

"Initiate," a computerized voice announced above the destructive din of the firing of rifles and pistols from a distant past, "Operation: Brainiac!"

The entirety of the planet Colu was almost instantly reduced to rubble. Their race, those existing and resisting on the world of their evolutionary development, dating back nearly a million civilized years, atomized.

With only a single physical consciousness, that which happened to be not only closest to the Computer Tyrants but belonging to the bringer of such anti-societal action, becoming the physical/metaphysical recipient of the Syntho-Mind, itself…

Vril Drox, flesh-and-bone freedom fighter, was no more. Now and ever after what would remain was referred to by the self-same codename given to the anti-anarchy operation preprogrammed, for hundreds of years, into said cybernetic super-intelligence.

"I…am…Brainiac!"

END OF CHAPTER 1


	2. Chapter 2

**THE HEADY KNIGHT**

Chapter 2

Superman, having foiled evil folly that seemed to rise so consistently within Metropolis' limits, whether secretly presided over by the likes of Lex Luthor or not, swooped his way back to his downtown apartment. Once there, he swiftly, at super-speed, retrieved super-strength folded clothing from his red cape's secret inner lining and, in the space of a single Human heartbeat, donned it all in order to transform himself into Clark Kent.

Complete with meekly combed hair, loser glasses, and neatly knotted tie.

Reaching his smallish living room, Clark noticed his answering machine's tirelessly blinking light with the number "1" burning in the little square screen signifying a single message.

His expression screwed itself into earnest puzzlement as his forefinger gently stabbed the button in order to replay said message…

"Clark, where the hell do you go after work?" said the voice that was undeniably Lois Lane's, bringing a swift smile to the mild-mannered countenance of Superman's newspaper reporter persona. "Well, I hope you hear this way before nine o'clock. In case you've forgotten, we're supposed to go out to dinner tonight."

Knitting his brow behind the glasses, Clark quietly queried, "Dinner? Tonight?" then continued to listen to the rest.

"I did tell you about going out to dinner tonight before you left the Daily Planet today didn't I?"

Clark quietly shook his head as Lois' voice finished, "Well, it doesn't matter. Just be over here to pick me up at my apartment by no later than eight fifteen."

Glancing at his wristwatch, Clark Kent noted that the time already digitally read: 8:10.

"Don't stand me up, Clark, or I swear…"

Swwwwwwwwoooooooosssssssssshhhhhhh!

A split-second later, at the apartment of the lovely Lois Lane…

"…I'll kick you square in the…"

Bing-bong-ding-dong!

Looking in the direction of the doorbell, Lois slowly set her cordless phone back on its base and strode toward the triple-locked entrance into her larger, better furnished apartment several city blocks from Clark Kent's.

"Clark?" Lois said as she such was verified via the peephole, then proceeded to throw open three burglarproof locks in order to open up. "Well, don't you look nice."

Clark Kent had not only swiftly streaked there as Superman, but also obtained and donned a dandy new suit designed especially for dinner engagements. Seemingly matching, as if by magic, Lois Lane's delicious designer frock, form fitting and beautiful, as only someone with super-vision could.

"You did say eight-fifteen," Clark said with a sly smile as Lois closed her door, locking it thrice from the outside.

After arriving via Metropolis taxi, gentlemanly taken care of by Clark, he and Lois promptly made their way into one of the city's best restaurants which, because of Lois Lane's award-winning notoriety, more so than Clark Kent's, meant neither had to wait for a table.

Unlike the line of fine-eating customers awaiting their previously reserved seating, dressed in expensive suits and dinner dresses, left to grimace and grumble…

"Who died in made them important?"

"We've been waiting here half-an-hour!"

"Wait, isn't that Lois Lane?"

"Who cares? We were here first!"

"She's not so pretty…is she, George? George. George!"

"Oh, uh, y-yes, dear."

No sooner seated than the real reason for Lois Lane making this last-minute dinner date with Clark Kent walked in amidst the expected paparazzi snapping pictures and the "ooo's" and "ahhh's" of the waiting customers.

"Oh, look," said Lois in feigned innocence as Clark looked in the direction of the flesh-and-blood object of dinnertime adulation, "Bruce Wayne's here…with a date. What a coincidence."

It quickly became clear that no coincidence was responsible. Clearly Lois Lane had learned, from one of her many secret sources, that Bruce Wayne was, for some as yet undisclosed reason, visiting Metropolis, in general, and this swank restaurant, in particular.

Clark looked at Lois and shook his head, a half-grin gracing his geeky, when not the Man of Steel, bespectacled countenance, "You know, Lois, you could have told me the truth. I would've still come."

"Yeah, well," Lois said as she quickly checked her hair and makeup in the compact that appeared so easily in one well-manicured hand, "guess I'm just too used to being sneaky when I'm on the trail of a hot story. Such as: 'What brings Bruce Wayne all the way from Gotham City?' or 'Mr. Wayne, is there any truth to the rumor that you're in Metropolis to close a sizeable land deal that could rival LexCorp holdings?'…that kind of thing."

"Well, Lois," said Clark, while clearing his throat and tugging at his tie, "since I'm here, too, I think we should share this byline. Don't you?"

Lois hesitated for an instant, as if to argue, then begrudgingly agreed, "Oh, all right, Clark, come on. But I get to ask all the questions."

"So what else is new?" quipped Clark as the two walked toward the special table-for-two, complete with a magnum of Dom Perignon and their very own bevy of servers.

"Excuse me, Mr. Wayne," she said in a tone that was the epitome of professionalism, "Lois Lane…Daily Planet…"

"And, uh," Clark quietly interjected, even as he and Bruce shared an instant of bemused hero-to-hero recognition, "Clark Kent, uh, Mr. Wayne."

"I thought you were going to let me ask the questions, Clark?" she said in a hushed aside suffused with sexual tension, causing the disguised Superman to stifle an even greater grin. Then, she said, "Uh, my apologies, Mr. Wayne, now, as I was saying, reliable rumor has it…"

Facial shrugs expressed the closeness as well as amusement of two diametrically different citizens, although, underneath, both were costumed crimefighters of singular statures.

But neither could comprehend the cosmic threat proceeding straight for Earth at near-light velocities after having traversed space-and-time via temporary tunnels of hyperspace from where a world and race had recently been obliterated…

…only to have given birth to Brainiac.

Though still basically a bald, green-skinned Coluan, the addition of mind-altering/amplifying red diodes embodied the remnants of vile, unfeeling, super-computerized existence, once supreme, but now infused within this space-spanning person occupying a quickly created single-entity starship.

"Distance from planetary objective," demanded Brainiac, in a mechanically cold cadence, of his flawlessly designed starship's nanocompters meant especially for details too minute to concern such as he.

"ETA to Earth at current sublight speed: 35.19 minutes."

"Lock onto the Kryptonian," coldly ordered Brainiac without a hint of former emotionality. "I do not wish to waste anymore time on him…than on any of the other so-called 'superheroes' encountered in the previous six star systems."

"Kryptonian's body-signature locked," passionlessly proclaimed the nanocompters. "ETA to Earth at current sublight speed: 34.52 minutes."

"Soon," said Brainiac with a slight snarl being all that's left of a once truly living being, even as his holographic display screens of Superman were replayed from prior long-range hyperspace scans. "Soon…the Kryptonian will be annihilated. And, after him…the entire planet Earth."

END OF CHAPTER 2


	3. Chapter 3

**THE HEADY KNIGHT**

Chapter 3

"…and, again, Ms. Lane," said Bruce Wayne as his patience with reporters, especially this beautiful brunette, standing next to his crimefighting colleague-in-common disguise, Clark Kent, wore very, very thin, "I have no comment at the moment. For now, I am simply entertaining my date, Ms. Elka LeBaron, current holder of the Ms. Gotham City crown and…"

"I'm sure that's all very interesting, Mr. Wayne," abruptly interrupted Lois Lane in the stern style for which such as she had developed a reputation as the pit-bull reporter for The Daily Planet. "But I'm not doing a story for The National Enquirer, so let's stick with the reliable rumors regarding your true reason for visiting Metropolis and how it might apply to a LexCorp-versus-Wayne Enterprises situation that…"

Suddenly, the ground began to quake uncontrollably, causing Ms. LeBaron to cry out, "Wh-what's happening, Bruce? This c-can't be an earthquake…this is Metropolis not L.A.!"

"I don't know, Elka!" Bruce also shouted, even as he mentally entered Batman mode, his magnificent mind swiftly shifting from casual socializing to Dark Knight detecting. "Get under the table! Quickly!"

So, too, did Clark Kent's seemingly clumsy, mild-mannered Self shift swiftly into Superman mode as his X-ray/telescopic vision revealed that, indeed, all of Metropolis was subject to this continuing quake. To the point where it became quite clear that he needed to slip away and become the Man of Steel in order to save lives.

"Uh, yes, get under the table, Lois, and cover your head!" Clark also strongly suggested loud enough to be more readily heard over the rumbling, worsening, tremors.

As both beautiful ladies climbed under said table and quickly covered their heads, just as virtually everyone else in the fine eatery was doing…

Clark Kent and Bruce Wayne hurriedly ran for some less visible section in order to ditch outer clothing in favor of one blue-red and one blue-gray costume, the first with easily understood "S" chest shield and the second with an equally recognizable bat-in-yellow chest shield.

"I'll go keep people from being flattened by falling building debris!" loudly said Superman a few short seconds before streaking up-and-away.

"It's gonna take time to have my Batmobile self-drive itself from Gotham to Metropolis," huskily, though loudly, replied Batman, adjusting his cruel costume's impermeable half-hood, "but I'll do whatever I can to help, Kal-El!"

Even as the earthquake caused fixtures to fall and dishes to crash and people to scream in terror…

Superman was soaring skyward, then, just as swiftly, streaking to quickly catch huge hunks of concrete in order to prevent such from causing dozens of bloody deaths.

Batman used his one-of-a-kind cunning and infallible acrobatic balance, combined with the pure courage of the Caped Crusader, to save several via his all-too-Human abilities…

"Quickly! Duck in this doorway!"

All along the downtown streets a cacophonous symphony of car alarms could be heard…

WEEEE-ooooo! WEEEE-ooooo! WEEEE-ooooo! WEEEE-ooooo!

Beeep! Beeep! Beeep! Beeep! Beeep! Beeep!

…until the remaining screams were mercilessly drowned out.

As suddenly as it started, the seemingly relentless quaking concluded.

And as Batman stood in the midst of a debris-strewn street, with Superman streaking down to stand at the Dark Knight's side…

"What could've caused this, Batman?" pondered the super-powered Man of Steel as his handsome, square-jawed countenance bore an intense scowl. "My super-vision and super-hearing found no evidence of any sort of explosive device and Lex, it seems, is still out of town…which could still be suspicious enough to…"

"I don't believe Lex Luthor is at the heart of this, Superman," huskily said Batman while looking up into the nighttime Metropolitan sky. "Take a look."

Superman didn't even need his vaunted super-vision, as the obvious object of Batman's detection slowly lowered into view…

"What in Rao's name…?" slowly exclaimed Superman as his true-blue eyes beheld a bald, green-skinned, mechanically enhanced, hulking being with blinking, glowing red diodes deliberately placed geometrically about his hairless head.

Finally landing a half-block from the World's Finest, one in blue-red and one in blue-gray, the greatly restructured physicality that, very recently, rested within the curious confines of a single-person starship, currently in low orbit about the Earth, spoke with an amplified, synthetically-sounding voice that rattled windows.

"I am Brainiac! Former resident of a now-destroyed world called Colu!"

Batman was quick to ask of Superman, "Brainiac? Colu? Wasn't there a Brainiac-5 from Colu in the Legion of Super-Heroes we'd recently helped against Composite Superman?"

"Yes," Superman was swift to explain, "but that was in a different time-reality than ours. Remember? Apparently, in this reality, Colu has been destroyed and this Brainiac is here to…"

"Silence, Kryptonian!" loudly came the amplified command from Brainiac, much more muscular than the blonde-haired, green-skinned B-5 in that other reality, as well as heavily augmented by readily recognizable cybernetic and mechanical attachments all about his beefed-up body. The red head diodes blinking much more rapidly and glowing much more brightly.

"What do you want, Brainiac?" Superman shouted back, even as his super-muscles flexed significantly beneath his skin-tight blue-red costume.

"I should think that would be quite clear, Kryptonian," said Brainiac less vociferously as a ghost of a smile played upon his otherwise emotionless face of green. "I am here to destroy you, then…I shall destroy this planet!"

As Superman glanced to Batman, the Cowled One tensely intoned, "Just when I was looking forward to a pleasant night out."

END OF CHAPTER 3


	4. Chapter 4

**THE HEADY KNIGHT**

Chapter 4

"All right, Perry, can you hear me?" asked an excited, though also a little timorous, Lois Lane via her cellphone connection to Perry White, editor-in-chief of The Daily Planet, still in his office even at this hour. "Good. 'It was like something out of a Michael Bay movie. A green-skinned being, completely mechanically enhanced in a semi-robotic manner granting him super-human strength landed in the middle of Metropolis. Superman swiftly took the fight to him in the middle of a quake-damaged main street, but seemed to be fighting a losing battle.' Got that so far, Perry? What? I don't know where Clark is! He's probably still hiding somewhere inside the restaurant. Okay, ready for more?"

Even as Lois persisted in reporting via her ever-present, always fully charged cellphone, Batman began battling Brainiac the best way he knew how. Utilizing a wide range of devices, all very clever-but-non-lethal, in a vain attempt to slow the super-powerful ex-Coluan revolutionary in order to grant the reprieve Superman needed in order to try to overcome and conquer this extraterrestrial threat to over six billion.

But even the Dark Knight's mightiest 500-pound test grapple-line proved far too little, once the artificially empowered, super-intelligent Brainiac snapped such as easily as one would a loose thread…

…only to return to battering Superman with cybernetic-assisted super-blows both bruising and bloodying the Last Son of Krypton.

Unlike anything short of the Batman's secretly carried-in-lead-lined Bat-belt compartment, just in case!, Green Kryptonite Bat-knuckles used the time the Crown Prince of Crime managed to obtain some seldom locatable Red Kryptonite to gain control of the Man of Steel.

"Perry, when the hell's Jimmy gonna get here?" insolently shouted Lois into her cell, disregarding the irrefutable fact that Perry was her boss. Instead considering him simply someone rapidly pounding the keys of his office's computer in an attempt to get down, word for word, what Lois Lane was witnessing from a scant sixty or seventy feet away.

"Okay, okay, here goes: 'While Superman seems to be fighting a losing battle, the Batman, heroic mystery man from Gotham City, has, somehow, slipped silently into Metropolis and, even now, uses everything carried in his bright yellow Bat-belt…but to no avail. The creature calling itself 'Brainiac' and claiming to be from a planet called 'Colu', which has apparently been annihilated mere hours ago, continues to dominate…'"

"You cannot win, Kryptonian," emotionlessly proclaimed Brainiac as he ruthlessly rained down blow after bombastic blow with artificially infused super-musculature, for the moment, even as he also dealt directly with the Cowl-and-Caped Crimefighter not meant to be a party to Superman's plight.

"And you," Brainiac said vociferously, "whom my constantly connected-to-orbiting-starship Syntho-Mind has identified as the Batman from a sprawling city several hundred miles distant…hold out no hope of defeating the perfect supercomputer/humanoid hybrid. Especially one so synthetically altered to more than match the superhuman strength of this so-called Superman! You are but a buzzing insect whose vexatious existence shall soon be exterminated."

Even as Batman's indomitable Human will collided with equally Human limitations, causing severely distressed muscles, even beneath the bulletproof padding of his blue-gray bat-like costume, to send so many messages of agony to his brain, he could scarcely concentrate. Suddenly…

VrrrrrrrrrrrmmmmmmmmmmmmRRRRRRRRRRRMMMMMMMM!

It was the unmistakable sound of a super-charged turbo-engine, performing at ground speeds exceeding two hundred-plus miles-per-hour, with satanic tongues of flame leaping out from the cylindrical end of a bat-like rear end.

"At last," sighed the Batman, literally smiling through palpable pain, as his always-impressive Batmobile rapidly self-drove itself in and around road debris brought about by the earlier earthquake clearly created via Brainiac's arrival.

Then, no sooner screeching to a sideways stop, simultaneously attracting the cybernetic attention of Brainiac and allowing the manhandled Man of Steel a moment to recuperate from the pitiless pummeling he'd undergone up to now…

"What the…?" quietly exclaimed Batman, before reaching his singularly obsidian source of swift transportation, as its cockpit opened to reveal a very unanticipated passenger. "Nightwing?"

Out leapt the former Robin, Boy Wonder to Batman's Dark Knight, now dressed in basic black leather, form fitting with no visible Velcro closures, highlighted with very visible indigo-blue racing-stripe type insignia dominating chest as well as running along either arm down onto the back of tightly gloved fists.

After activating his spring-loaded double-ended metallic fighting stave, which seemed to magically appear in one gloved hand, and promptly taking the standard stance for staff-fighting…

"Hello, Batman," the fully grown man in the eye-covering mask said with a self-certain smirk, springing from the twofold fact that, during the day, he was police officer Dick Grayson in Blüdhaven, and during the night, Nightwing. "Heard about the Batmobile's emergency self-drive activation from, uh, a mutual friend from the Batcave. Thought I'd catch a ride. Good thing, too. Looks like you two could use some help."

Superman was still too busy trying to recuperate, but Batman's cowled face formed a smile born of pride in the person who used to be his teenaged sidekick many years earlier, prior to the Cowled One partnering up with the Man of Steel from time to time.

"All the help we can get, old friend," Batman finally said as Lois Lane continued dictating her stop-the-presses report via cellphone connection to The Daily Planet's very own Perry White.

"New paragraph, Chief," Lois said too swiftly for Perry to proffer an objection to being called Chief. "'And now, from Gotham City's adjacent municipality, Blüdhaven, comes a second masked mystery man of heroic propensities: Nightwing!' New paragraph. 'Though Batman and Nightwing have fought so well that it appeared as if they had worked in tandem before, Brainiac's enhancements, combined with and controlled by what was obviously a supercomputer-type intellect, continued to stymie any semblance of impending defeat. Meanwhile, Superman, battered, bruised, and bleeding, did what a superhero was supposed to do: returned to the battle that, so far, seemed to be in Brainiac's robotic favor.' New paragraph."

Superman, one eye swollen shut, dried blood leaving a broken line down one side of a bruised and battered mouth, clearly laboring beneath greater-than-expected odds, still used his own super-strength to try and do what his other super-powers simply could not. And all due to a self-generated anti-heat vision/super-breath force field existing invisibly a single scant inch about the beefed-up form belonging to Brainiac.

Pounding his super-powerful fists into a green being every bit as invulnerable, so it seemed, as the Last Son of Krypton, not to mention twice as fast in regards to reflexes used solely in physical fighting, it was becoming quite clear that Superman was not going to defeat this foe. Not by himself.

Working in concert with one another's acrobatic abilities combined with martial arts skills, not to mention manmade weapons unique to each, Batman and Nightwing narrowly managed to even keep the green-skinned super-villain from space busy enough to delay any destructive actions against the entirety of Earth.

"You are wasting precious time," snarled Brainiac with only a hint of potential emotion, supposedly canceled out by the Syntho-Mind now dominating the former Vril Drox. "You have not the power to defeat the ultimate in computer-controlled physicality. I shall now obliterate all three of you, and then…"

Zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzziiiiiiiiiiipppppppppppppp!

Boommmm!

Suddenly streaking in at multi-Mach speed, creating a quick ground level sonic boom as a result, was a red-and-yellow blur that, suddenly stopping short within striking range of the bald, green-skinned Brainiac…

"Hi, there, Superman, Batman, uh, Night-guy from Blüdhaven," said the super-speeding superhero costumed all in red, including skin-tight cowl, with simulated yellow lightning bolts to either side, on the chest, with yellow friction-resistant boots. "And hello to you, too, Mr. I-Think-I'll-Destroy-The-World. The name's Flash. From Central City, Missouri…you know, the 'Show Me' state. So, big, green, and mean…show me."

"Perry," tensely said an impatient-to-report Lois Lane via her cellphone, "where the hell is…?"

"Sorry, I'm late, Ms. Lane," panted an out of breath red-haired, freckle-faced staff photographer for The Daily Planet, "traffic was backed up for…"

"Never mind that, Jimmy," scolded Lois while gesturing with her phone hand toward the site of a super-fight supreme about to take place less than a hundred yards away, "start snapping pictures!"

Seeing it all, at long last, with Batman, Superman, Nightwing, and the Flash surrounding the seemingly indestructible Brainiac, Jimmy Olsen could only utter a single, seemingly old-fashioned, two-syllable utterance.

"Gol-ly!"

END OF CHAPTER 4


	5. Chapter 5

**THE HEADY KNIGHT**

Chapter 5/Conclusion

"'Downtown Metropolis was a war zone.

"'Thus far this fateful evening, Batman, mysteriously visiting Metropolis, and Superman have attempted to turn back Brainiac. Once known, Brainiac announced, as Vril Drox, this bald, green-colored leader from some failed attempt to free his people, only ended in the total destruction of his world. And, it would certainly seem, the possession of his humanoid being by the surviving 'Syntho-Mind'.

"'Turning him into…Brainiac.

"'And now, the arrival of two more heroes, one clearly a former friend of Batman's, calling himself Nightwing, the other a master of super-speed from Central City, Missouri calling himself the Flash. And with them the final leg of a long fought conflict holds in the balance the potential end of all on Earth.'"

"Sounds great, Lois," said Perry White via her still transmitting cellphone after rereading it verbatim back to her, "only problem is…if what you say here is right…there'll be no one else left to read it!"

"I know, Perry," sighed a suddenly exhausted Lois Lane as she continued to watch the super-fight still taking place some hundred yards distant, while Jimmy Olsen continued snapping photos to eventually transmit back to the Chief so as to be included with what she had, in a round-robin way, written. "But what else can a reporter do? Even if what's being reported…is the absolute end?"

In the pause in Perry's expected reply, Lois watched Brainiac counter each and ever coordinated attack from Batman, Nightwing, Superman, and the Flash. Each carefully applying powers or skills, not to mention remaining Bat-belt held devices, with increasingly flaccid results.

Brainiac was winning.

How could any amount of pictures combined with even innumerable reams of printed-out pages destined for probable publication ever truly capture what witnesses by the dozens had already seen?

The Flash's multi-Mach running, even in tornado-strength circles about Brainiac…

Superman's resurgence of super-strength fueled by unfettered determination even in the face of a defeat suffered via a bruised and battered body along with a loss of blood unlike anything the Man of Steel had ever experienced…

Batman making use of sophisticated tactics, non-lethal implements long used against such super-villains of Gotham City as the Joker, Two-Face, the Riddler, the Penguin, and more. Only to be beat back by Brainiac again and again and again…

And Nightwing, so comfortable fighting alongside the Dark Knight, making use of courage, agility, martial arts skills, and a collapsible staff of unbreakable metal suspiciously close to something the Batman might've contrived.

But, just as it seemed Brainiac was about to beat the four for the final time before obliterating the entire Earth…

"Death and defeat should now be obvious, even to such as you," said the supercomputer/humanoid hybrid, even as head diodes burned brighter and flashed more frantically, signifying a significant increase in Syntho-Mind activity within the bald, green-skinned skull of the super-villain from space. "You cannot win against a being drawing strength from above and beyond. Brainiac is as absolute…as space itself!"

It happened at that self-same instant of impending downfall of the superheroes. With Superman on his knees, severely battered and bleeding and looking nothing like the Man of Steel. With the Flash actually fatigued and unable to regenerate his super-speed for even one last burst. With Nightwing wallowing on the partially pulverized pavement as agony announced itself to every inch of his extremely athletic body. And with Batman barely able to stand at all…

"Superman!" shouted the Caped Crusader, even though such caused caustic stings to sweep through his battered torso. "It's his orbiting starship! That's what's feeding him more than enough pure power to keep winning over us!"

Nightwing slowly rolled to a staggering stance, instantly understanding as only the former Robin raised at the Batman's side could…

Even the Flash found swift solace in the Dark Knight's sense of certainty over something…

And Superman pushed aside his impossible pain, ignored the drying blood caked upon his too-swollen face, in order to streak skyward far too fast for even Brainiac to respond with proper counter-force…

"Nooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo!"

Long before Brainiac, suddenly beset on all sides by Batman, Nightwing, and the Flash, could initiate electronically transmitted levels of increased starship defense, Superman had already cleared Earth's upper atmosphere.

Then, with super-fists extended straight out like Battering Rams of Steel, he struck the side of the starship with more concentrated concussion than ten thousand multi-Megaton nuclear missiles could've delivered.

Though not enough to penetrate the protective shields automatically surrounding the vessel, so that its structure could not be obliterated utterly, Superman's super-impact was enough to force a shutdown of offensive systems and activate retrieval circuitry…

…which, not completely unexpected by Batman, teleported up Brainiac from city street to spatial orbit and, then, again working from an automatic self-protection program, sent said starship far through space-time in swiftly shaped hyperspace tunnels…

…which, without direct mental manipulation by Brainiac, who would need an untold length of time to self-repair, physically as well as mechanically, meant ending up on the opposite side of the known universe.

Superman managed to barely land and stand alongside Nightwing, the Flash, and, last but never ever least…Batman. Without whom this rather ragged victory might've never been won.

"I don't believe it," Lois Lane finally said absently into her cellphone. "Uh, Perry…get ready for an update to my story."

END


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